Defense by Foul
After my game at the state high school tournament, I spent much of the day with several other referees, and I'm pretty confident that all of them qualify as better than me. :)Put a bunch of referees together, and two things are likely to happen; the first is war stories. Instead of real discussion, we'll turn back into the old memory box - I sometimes wonder if it's a way for referees to prove their worth, especially to those who we percieve as superior to ourselves. I admit to doing this myself, but I've tried to make a conscious effort on refraining from this (Does the National referee really care about this? No - s/he's got plenty of stories like this or worse) on a regular basis. I don't mean to say that these can't be helpful - I did do this once at the tournament game, but it was with a purpose behind it. No, really! It was in our pregame, and I wanted to illustrate one of the "non-standard" signals an AR did for me that was very helpful, and if he wanted me to do it - he knew of it and was emphatic that yes, he wanted that done if necessary. But with that aside, I was surrounded by referees with gobs more experience, not to mention skill, than I - so for the most part, I kept my mouth shut, tried to digest as much as I could into the old brainbox, and asked questions when I thought appropriate.
The second thing that referees will do is talk about other referees performance. Think about it - we're doing the exact same job as the referees in the MLS, just not at the same level; when we watch on television (or if you're lucky enough, at the stadium), it looks so easy, but of course its not, but you can't help it and critique it anyway. Most of the time, like the war stories above, it's not for their benifit, but for ours. At the tournament, there was critiqueing being done (not formal critiqueing, but critiqueing nonetheless by one of the officials from local USSF organization), and he chose to let me in on his observations in order, not to puff up egos, like is common, to be to help me with my game, and understanding of what's going on. Did I mention earlier that that day just left me so jazzed up over reffing?
During one of the games, he brought to my attention something that he call "Defense by Foul." One of the teams we were watching appeared be, as a team tactic, fouling any player that got near them - not just physical play, but not excessive force, but definate fouling if a player got near them. It seemed to be a grey area not addressed by Persistent Infringement, which seems to be foused on fouls committed against individual players. It brings up questions on how you deal with it; neither the Laws nor the Advice to Referees address it - so technically you either lower the bar way down on what is reckless, or open a can of worms by reinterpreting what is Persistent Infringement. Like much of soccer, there is no definate answer.